The easiest way to test the honesty of a belief is to give people the opportunity to put their money where their mouths is. What this in mind...
Should this forum facilitate micropayments? If you say yes, then you'd like to have the chance to spend your own money in order to help give women, blacks, gays and Hindu more options. If you say no, then your concern for these people is not genuine.
Logistics - You'd use paypal to deposit money into your forum “wallet” (FW). If you valued Gabe's thread at a penny, then you'd click the penny button and a penny would be transferred from your FW into Gabe's FW. Once Gabe had enough pennies in his FW he could request a withdrawal. Max Barry would take his cut and paypal the rest to Gabe.
Feasibility - Just how feasible is to turn this forum into a market? It's entirely feasible.
Layout - I suffer from a shortage of design skills, but perhaps sharing a bad design is better than not sharing any design...
With this layout, the coin buttons and allocation info would be immediately above the OP. But perhaps it makes more sense for them to be immediately after the OP? To the right of the coins you can see how much you've allocated to this thread and how much the crowd has allocated to it. In the upper right of the page, just below your username, you'd be able to see your FW balance.
Approaches - The approach to micropayments that I've proposed is the "Pay-What-You-Want" (PWYW) approach. Another approach is the "One-Price-Fits-All" (OPFA) approach... ie Blendle. Given that one price really does not fit all, I'm pretty sure that the PWYW approach is superior. But I could be wrong!
Builderism - Perhaps it might be objected that facilitating "one click giving" on this forum will not really give disadvantaged people better options...
Gabe's not going to be able to give up his day job if he only receives a penny for his thoughts/threads. If this is your objection, then what you're arguing is that disadvantaged people won't create sufficiently valuable threads and/or members won't spend enough money on them...
I'm guessing that anybody who supports anti-discrimination laws also supports minimum wage laws. If you have no problem forcing employers to pay more than their valuation of labor, then you should have no problem forcing yourself to pay more than your valuation of threads.
The more money you pay for threads, the more women, blacks, gays and Hindus would be able to give up their day jobs...
Income from posting at Nation States > Income from flipping burgers at McDonald's
Even if only white guys are able to give up their day jobs, this would still be beneficial to disadvantaged people. Why? Because there would be less white guys to compete with for other types of jobs.
There are other reasons to support turning this forum into a market...
Prioritize - There's no shortage of information on the topic of information overload...
The Age of Notifications - Steven Levy
10 Steps To Conquering Information Overload - Laura Shin
The paradox of choice - Barry Schwartz
Why sharing will eventually kill you - Aris Theophilakis
Websites are making it easier and easier to share information. With more and more information it's more and more difficult to find information that's truly valuable. The solution is simple. Websites need to make it easier and easier to valuate information. Hence, micropayments. The crowd can use their coin clicks to help guide you to important information. And you can use your coin clicks to help guide the crowd to information that's important to you. Of course, the less accurate the valuations, the less accurate this value guidance system becomes. Garbage in, garbage out.
Cultivate - An apple seed won’t germinate and thrive without adequate love (fertile soil, water, sun, etc). So if you love apples, then it would behoove you to contribute to the seedling’s cultivation. Otherwise, the seedling might not grow and bear fruit...which would result in a shortage of something that you love...apples.
If Nation States facilitated cultivating creativity with cash, then this would create a wide variety of viable and fertile niches for a wide variety of good thoughts/ideas to grow to fruition.
Laboratories - It's been said that states are the laboratories of democracy. Given that there are only around 50 states here in the US... it shouldn't be a surprise that democracy hasn't really improved that much. But if Nation States makes valuing threads as easy as Facebook has made it to like posts... then Nation States would become a better market. Who wants to participate in better markets? Everybody. So it's a given that other websites would follow suit... Wired, The Economist, Democracy Journal, Medium, Jacobin, The New Rambler, Crooked Timber, Huffington Post, The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, Netflix, Spotify, Youtube, Facebook and countless other websites would all endeavor to become better markets. When websites become the laboratories of markets, and there are a gazillion websites, then market failure will be quickly weeded out. Markets will improve at an exponential rate.
Precedent - "I have to say, I feel it's my fault. I failed to create an adequate simulation of the real world." - Max Barry, brb buying ByteCoin
I'm not exactly sure whether or not that was an elaborate April Fool's joke. But clearly Barry's somewhat interested in the general topic.
And yes, I do realize that this is his website and he can do what he wants with it. Anybody who mentions this owes me $5 dollars.
Review - Micropayments can...
1. ...create more options for others
2. ...prioritize information
3. ...empower us to cultivate valuable ideas/thoughts
4. ...transform websites into markets
Discussion - Ok citizens of Nation States, let's have some excellent discussion!
1. Should this forum facilitate micropayments?
2. Do you hate this idea so much that you'd leave if it was implemented?
3. What are some of the potential unintended consequences?
4. Would you want to see the total amount of money that another member has spent?
5. Which is more important to know?
A. Total number of posts that a member has made
B. Total number of dollars that a member has allocated
6. Would you want to be able to see another member's allocations sorted from highest to lowest?
7. Would you want to be able to allocate money to both threads and posts... or just threads?
8. If you value a thread at $0.50 cents, but you don't allocate any money to it, are you a free-rider?
9. Do you perceive that the free-rider problem would be significant?
10. If so, what are some ways to incentivize/encourage/reward voluntary contributions/allocations? Perks? Privileges? Prestige? Parades? Wall of fame?
11. Do you think that micropayments are the future?
12. What is the proper scope of micropayments? (ie, not appropriate for forums but appropriate for Youtube because...videos > threads)
13. If Facebook facilitated micropayments, what's the total amount of money that would have been allocated to this post by Robert Reich?
14. How much would you allocate to this thread? Be careful, you might just get the chance to put your money where your mouth is. If it helps, I'm Mexican. But I am male and straight though.
More
Supporting The People And Content You Love
Beyond the Deadweight Loss of “All You Can Eat” Subscriptions
The $1,000 CPM
I’ve often been critical of economists fetish of putting a price on everything and believing that the price mechanism is a miraculous device capable of solving any problem. They vastly overstate the case. However, I think Lanier is right in this instance. He suggests that a broad middle class capable of supporting a vibrant capitalist economy can only be nurtured if all the people who actually create the value of the Internet get paid for the information they currently supply for free. Digital networking technology is more than sophisticated enough to track value creation across all the world’s users, so as to provide the information required for a system of micropayments — people who create value, no matter where and when it was ultimately used, would get paid for it. - Mark Buchanan, Our economies are messed up. And the cause is the Internet.
